A Better Bureau.

During the 1950s, as for several decades before and several decades after, J. Edgar Hoover was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When he was named director of the national police agency in 1924, he was faced with the task of changing it from a corrupt and inefficient organization to an effective one. He had demonstrated his qualifications for the job by overseeing the infamous Palmer raids against American radicals in 1919-1920. In short order the new director purged the bureau of its dishonest and incompetent agents and replaced them with qualified, loyal men.

Birth of the G-Man.

Through the 1930s and 1940s Hoover and his reformed FBI became more and more popular with the American public. During the Depression the "G-men," as federal agents were called, consistently made headlines by capturing or killing gangsters such as John Dillinger, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and Charles "Pretty...